Watch Dogs surprised me with good writing, but The Last of Us convinces me on the more important gameplay and atmosphere aspects. Winner of the day — and that’s coming from someone who hates playing the Uncharted games.

iOS 6 makes it pretty obvious, I think, that Apple has wanted to have turn-by-turn directions on the iPhone for a while, but couldn’t as long as they were using Google. And I would be surprised if Google hadn’t been asking for more and more money — or more and more ad impressions — with each iOS release. (Remember that Reddit post about Maps giving sponsored directions to another fast-food place than what the user asked for, even though it was twice as far? That’s definitely not Apple’s idea.)

I don’t think iOS 6 is Apple getting rid of Google out of pettiness; I’m certain they switched to a new data source in order to offer more functionality, and at the cost of removing less important functionality that TomTom can’t provide. (Turn-by-turn is much more important to the iPhone than transit maps — transit info will be available in free or cheap third-party apps, but turn-by-turn was an expensive App Store purchase and as a third-party app it couldn’t be integrated with Siri. Voice-operated turn-by-turn, included with the phone, is going to be a huge factor for many people hesitating between iPhone and Android.)

21 juin

I’ve heard from many people who think that this isn’t possible. That once you pull an app from the store you must essentially abandon it. That is simply not true.

So long as you don’t actually delete the old version of the app within iTunes Connect you can continue submitting updates to apps even while they are in the Developer Removed from Sale state. Whether this is intentional functionality is unclear but I have verified that it does in fact work and the resulting approved updates are available for customers.

Interesting. I assume that “available for customers” means the update won’t be pushed to their devices and they have to use the purchases list to download it “again,” but that’s still better than nothing.

Where I see this hurting most users is from automatic phone syncs of contacts. Running through my phone, I see all these @facebook email addresses now.

Remember what’s coming this summer? iOS 6, and automatic Facebook contact sync for everyone (I’m under the impression that it’s an option — haven’t installed the beta myself, but I read something to that effect on Twitter — but you can be sure that most people will enable it, because why wouldn’t they? it beats manually entering the info). It’s not like people use e-mail much these days, but it’s still definitely going to make a noticeable difference in usage, and it is a hijacking of people’s email accounts.

So, yeah, I’m moving this from “benign” to “evil.”

And, as a bonus:

Isn’t it funny how this privacy control doesn’t exist anywhere else in the profile settings, and its title (“Shown on Timeline” / “Hidden from Timeline”) doesn’t make any sense for what it actually does, and it can end up completely contradicting the regular privacy control that’s on its left (oddly enough, at Facebook’s benefit)? Even for Facebook, that’s oddly inefficient and obtuse UI, isn’t it?

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but the release of the Extended Cut revived online discussions a bit, so I only just thought of this analogy and I want to write it down somewhere. (Vague spoilers if you haven’t seen Return of the Jedi and played Mass Effect 3.)

The scene takes place on Endor. The scooby gang has just been captured by Ewoks, C3P0 is their god and is playing the role of his life: translator, and also god.

C3PO

They say they’ve been waiting for us. They’ve been watching us all along and waiting for us to get here. They say they control the midichlorians.

LUKE

The… what?

C3PO

They say the Force is the power of midichlorians. They are inside you. The more you use the Force, the more the midichlorians control you. And the Ewoks control the midichlorians because they’re the spirits of their ancestors.

LUKE

Uh… okay.

C3PO

And they say they’ve been waiting for the last jedi to come here so they could ask him what he wants to do with that power. They can keep doing what they were doing, or they can relinquish control to you and you’ll have to stay here forever, or they can send all the midichlorians in the universe to Ewok Heaven, and all jedi will die. It’s up to you.

(beat)

You need to choose NOW.

LUKE

I… I don’t know… I guess… I don’t want to have control over them, I don’t want to have control over the Emperor and the empire and my father and… really, nobody should have this control. Yeah, nobody should have such a power, so release the miniclaws or whatever.

LUKE, LEIA and HAN SOLO all look at each other with TEARS in their eyes, or the closest approximation in HAN SOLO’s case. R2D2 WHISTLES MOURNFULLY.

C3PO

It is done.

C3PO’s eyes FADE OUT and he SLUMPS ON HIS THRONE because he had MIDICHLORIANS in his system ever since ANAKIN made him. LUKE, LEIA and HAN SOLO are OFF-SCREEN; we HEAR LEIA CRY OUT.

DISSOLVE TO: DEATH STAR, EMPEROR’S OFFICE

The EMPEROR DISAPPEARS, his CLOAK FALLS TO THE GROUND. Behind him, DARTH VADOR straightens up, then suddenly FALLS TO THE GROUND.